4 ms·

Which basically nulls one half of the beef this blog post has re canonizing typesetting over organization.

by feklar 10y ago

akkartik 10y ago
Hey, give me some credit here. My beef wasn't that CWeb doesn't let you reorder code. I was talking about policy rather than mechanism, that the ability of CWeb wasn't being put to best use.
- feklar 10y ago
  Can't blame me for misunderstanding when you have clearly written: >These are systems that focus on generating beautifully typeset documentation without allowing the author to arbitrarily order code. As CWEB does allow the author to arbitrarily order code. There's also this statement: >I speculate that nobody has actually read anybody else's literate programs in any sort of detail. Which suggests you yourself have never read any literate programs in detail. Thankfully this statement is provably false as the MMIX Group at MUAS exist? = true so I can merely comment that buggy line out and read the second half of your argument without it being entirely invalidated.
  - akkartik 10y ago
    > "These are systems that focus on generating beautifully typeset documentation without allowing the author to arbitrarily order code." The previous sentence was: "When I look around at the legacy of literate programming, systems to do so-called semi- or quasi-literate programming dominate." Semi- or quasi- being intended to distinguish with classic literate programming as in CWeb. I usually try to go out of my way to assume that if someone misunderstands me it's a failure of my writing, but in this case my post is filled with Knuth's original CWeb programs. It didn't seem realistic that you missed them all, or that you thought I missed that CWeb permits reordering in spite of having read so many CWeb programs. And then you make this new jab about me not having read any literate programs, in spite of me showing repeatedly in the article that I went all the way down the list at http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~uno/programs.html http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~uno/programs.html. Are you sure you read my post? --- Thanks for the pointer to http://mmix.cs.hm.edu/local http://mmix.cs.hm.edu/local. Not immediately obvious that it cares about literate programming, but I'll take your word for it. I'd appreciate intros to anybody in that group with experience reading literate programs (email address in profile).
    - feklar 10y ago
      A noweb file is a sequence of chunks, which may appear in any order. Nuweb allows the programmer to present elements of the program in any desired order. Babel/org-mode allows for arbitrary order as well. Here's an example of Babel: http://www.howardism.org/Technical/LP/introduction.html http://www.howardism.org/Technical/LP/introduction.html I'm not sure what LP implementations you have looked at it would have again helped any misunderstanding on my part if you had named said implementations that supposedly "dominate" the legacy of LP. The jab was to point out how your argument returns false with such statements as "I speculate nobody as ever read a literate program in detail", and "(typeset) can't render inside just about any actual programming environment (editor or IDE) on this planet, and so we can't make changes to it while we work on the codebase" yet emacs exists and can render typeset in a split screen buffer. DrRacket also renders tex and any other typeset you want http://lists.racket-lang.org/users/archive/attachments/20120311/77279964/attachment-0001.png http://lists.racket-lang.org/users/archive/attachments/20120...
      - dllthomas 10y ago
        In my experience, when you say "literate programming", most people think perl POD or literate Haskell before CWEB and similar. This was certainly the case for me before making a point of reading what Knuth had actually written (some many years back). I think that's unfortunate, and I think it's valuable to educate people that there's more ideas there than present in some of these systems, and that there are systems supporting more. But I think there are more constructive ways than ascribing malfeasance or incompetence to what seems itself a useful (if not maximally useful) piece of education.
        akkartik 10y ago
        Yeah, it's a couple of years old, and I too am a bit embarrassed when I read it now. It was a rant, read it as such. I find Literate Programming to be strictly an improvement over conventional programming. But "quasi-literate" systems to beautify programs aren't really Literate Programming, and their benefits are more questionable, since they pollute what the term means and keep people from realizing what Literate Programming can be. That's my frustration.

Which basically nulls one half of the beef this blog post has re canonizing typesetting over organization.

by feklar 10y ago

Which basically nulls one half of the beef this blog post has re canonizing typesetting over organization.

Hey, give me some credit here. My beef wasn't that CWeb doesn't let you reorder code. I was talking about policy rather than mechanism, that the ability of CWeb wasn't being put to best use.

feklar 10y ago
Can't blame me for misunderstanding when you have clearly written: >These are systems that focus on generating beautifully typeset documentation without allowing the author to arbitrarily order code. As CWEB does allow the author to arbitrarily order code. There's also this statement: >I speculate that nobody has actually read anybody else's literate programs in any sort of detail. Which suggests you yourself have never read any literate programs in detail. Thankfully this statement is provably false as the MMIX Group at MUAS exist? = true so I can merely comment that buggy line out and read the second half of your argument without it being entirely invalidated.
- akkartik 10y ago
  > "These are systems that focus on generating beautifully typeset documentation without allowing the author to arbitrarily order code." The previous sentence was: "When I look around at the legacy of literate programming, systems to do so-called semi- or quasi-literate programming dominate." Semi- or quasi- being intended to distinguish with classic literate programming as in CWeb. I usually try to go out of my way to assume that if someone misunderstands me it's a failure of my writing, but in this case my post is filled with Knuth's original CWeb programs. It didn't seem realistic that you missed them all, or that you thought I missed that CWeb permits reordering in spite of having read so many CWeb programs. And then you make this new jab about me not having read any literate programs, in spite of me showing repeatedly in the article that I went all the way down the list at http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~uno/programs.html http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~uno/programs.html. Are you sure you read my post? --- Thanks for the pointer to http://mmix.cs.hm.edu/local http://mmix.cs.hm.edu/local. Not immediately obvious that it cares about literate programming, but I'll take your word for it. I'd appreciate intros to anybody in that group with experience reading literate programs (email address in profile).
  - feklar 10y ago
    A noweb file is a sequence of chunks, which may appear in any order. Nuweb allows the programmer to present elements of the program in any desired order. Babel/org-mode allows for arbitrary order as well. Here's an example of Babel: http://www.howardism.org/Technical/LP/introduction.html http://www.howardism.org/Technical/LP/introduction.html I'm not sure what LP implementations you have looked at it would have again helped any misunderstanding on my part if you had named said implementations that supposedly "dominate" the legacy of LP. The jab was to point out how your argument returns false with such statements as "I speculate nobody as ever read a literate program in detail", and "(typeset) can't render inside just about any actual programming environment (editor or IDE) on this planet, and so we can't make changes to it while we work on the codebase" yet emacs exists and can render typeset in a split screen buffer. DrRacket also renders tex and any other typeset you want http://lists.racket-lang.org/users/archive/attachments/20120311/77279964/attachment-0001.png http://lists.racket-lang.org/users/archive/attachments/20120...
    - dllthomas 10y ago
      In my experience, when you say "literate programming", most people think perl POD or literate Haskell before CWEB and similar. This was certainly the case for me before making a point of reading what Knuth had actually written (some many years back). I think that's unfortunate, and I think it's valuable to educate people that there's more ideas there than present in some of these systems, and that there are systems supporting more. But I think there are more constructive ways than ascribing malfeasance or incompetence to what seems itself a useful (if not maximally useful) piece of education.
      - akkartik 10y ago
        Yeah, it's a couple of years old, and I too am a bit embarrassed when I read it now. It was a rant, read it as such. I find Literate Programming to be strictly an improvement over conventional programming. But "quasi-literate" systems to beautify programs aren't really Literate Programming, and their benefits are more questionable, since they pollute what the term means and keep people from realizing what Literate Programming can be. That's my frustration.